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Enough of you said you wanted some more hints on clearing up your data. So this one is: how not to insult Paul by calling him ‘Mrs’ and Sue by calling her ‘Mr’.

Right here in fact….

I’m sure you look through your data regularly. I do. Well, my poor team do if I’m being accurate. But when you’ve got a database and alert system, you might as well use it.

So, in this tip I’ll tell you how to find out how many of your contacts are missing a prefix (Mr or Mrs for instance), or where you’ve got the prefix wrong. A while back I listed a number of names within a company name that could describe which sector it was in.

Simply do the same with firstnames.

Now, you can either guess at loads of female names, like… Kate, Katie, Katy, Katherine, Catherine, Sarah, Emma, Susan, Bob, Sally etc etc. The eagle eyed amongst you will have seen the reference to Black Adder – showing my age there dear reader, and stupid sense of humour. But guessing girl firstnames will take you an age.

So get your database (and MS excel) to do it for you.

Simply download all the firstnames where the prefix is ‘Mrs’, ‘Miss’, ‘Ms’ and dump them into Excel. Then get excel to count the instances of names. So, Sarah will be in your database 283 times, Emma 107 times, etc etc. Take the top 100 names and do a search of your database where those names appear and the prefix is ‘Mr’. You’ll gasp at the errors you spot. Unless you are a real goodie goodie. Easy huh! And then do the same search where there is no prefix. And then set up that report to run weekly or monthly, and you’ll have a super up-to-date database in no time. And that’s just one small step.

Be wary of male/female names that could be the either a chap or a girl though….

So make it your mission to chase those, and even when they do, be aware that the data they give you will age very quickly. Be honest with them.. Tell them that you are aware that data is a pain, a load of hassle, not much fun…

Good data is underrated, but good data is vital for the long term success of the project / any marketing activity.

One more hint on this before I bore you to death … when you get the information, and when you are playing with it to put it into a standard format, resave it as different versions, not overwriting. Someone somewhere will have a whinge. And you need to go back to the stages to double check them / yourself.

It will be them I’ll bet. Most people don’t actually realise the quality of their own data until you show it to them in a clearer format. i.e. prefix, firstname, middlename, lastname, suffix , job title, etc etc

If you tweak your system – it’ll slowly cost you a fortune over time. It’ll also mean supporting your system is harder. And upgrades will be harder still.

OAnd here’s a bit more text on the subject….

If you have to tweak a few areas, make sure it’s future proof and that you can alter the values in the field (or whatever) yourself. A long time ago, I was asked to add ‘x’ field into one area of my system. Then a few month later, another, and some time after that – another. All within the same feature. Each time I ended up having to go back to the database suppliers – and each time, a nice little hit on my budget.

Now, if I’d set up one new field, and called it something generic – like ‘Misc tags’, then all I would have needed to do is update the pick lists. I’d have still been able to query on the values.

But.

Users might have got a bit confused, and downloads of that field would have looked a bit funny to the average ‘non techie’ user.

Swings and roundabouts huh!

Often the way.

User ease verses cost. Although not always. I’ve seen some very expensive systems that are so complex they don’t get used at all. Make it easy for your users – to use and get info back out…. or they won’t use it anyway.

Your CRM database can do the rotten task of checking for data integrity issues for you.

And you should be able to schedule it on a regular basis.

If you have an automated alert system bolted onto the side of your system, you can run all sorts of data checks each day / week / month. Maybe Crystal Reports (http://bit.ly/hDJF6I)? There are others, but this is a popular one. Orbis is another good one. Bit better if you ask me (http://bit.ly/gNq4tu), although I realise you didn’t. Look into these two if you want to make your CRM database really fly.

I think I’m running at about 150 different data integrity alerts and activity alerts each month these days. It’s allowed our team to manage many times the amount of data we did ten years ago, with less people. Now that’s a case for a database if ever I heard one.

For instance, you could run a monthly report on how many female firstnames have ‘Mr’ as their prefix. Illuminating I think you’ll find. I’ll tell you an easy way of finding those female names as well soon – one for a later tip though.

If you are starting to look for a new CRM system…. here are some major hints in how to save some of your budget.

Find them out here….

If you aren’t planning on checking and enhancing your data,use a spreadsheet instead

If all you are going to do is send mailings and emailings out to your contacts,use a spreadsheet instead

If all you are going to do is log who is turning up to your events,use a spreadsheet instead

If all you are going to do is have one person adding to, updating and seeing the information in the database, use a spreadsheet instead

Can you see where I’m going with this?

In fact, you only really need to spend your budget on a great big expensive database when you want to share information around your organisation and track historical and future activity with your contacts.

And if you and your users are not planning on doing that, don’t waste your time and budget.